Archer is coming back for season six in January, but there will be one change: no more ISIS. The name of Archer's spy agency will be changed this season because, well, duh. The so-called Islamic state (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) has been gaining more power in the Middle East, so the animated spy series thought it best to change the name of the fictional agency.
On Archer, ISIS stands for International Secret Intelligence Service, and is run by Jessica Walter's Malory Archer. In the new season, you'll see her on the phone with workers rolling out the blue and white ISIS sign that has been there for five seasons.
"“We quietly [changed it]. We were waiting for it to go away—at least I was. Back in Season 5, FX said, ‘This might be a thing,’ and I thought, ‘Maybe it won’t be? Maybe it’ll be the mole that I’m gonna ignore and nothing will happen.’" creator Adam Reed said. "We got sort of lucky and could organically make a merger with the CIA, so we went back and retroactively painted out the ISIS logos in parts of the show, and we just don’t talk about it in dialogue.”
As Reed mentions, Archer's ISIS becomes a part of the CIA in season six. “It’s just the most awful thing, and we didn’t want to have anything to do with it. There were people online saying that we should address it and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe these guys have co-opted our name.’ That’s the way South Park would do it, coming after them and saying, ‘These assholes stole our name,’ but that’s not the way the Archer universe works, where it’s all our own creations. In our universe, they don’t exist,” executive producer Matt Thompson said.
Another problem? FX made a ton of ISIS merchandise. Reed joked that they should just sell it to the ISIS terrorists, but needless to say FX didn't care for that. It would be funny though, admit it. Maybe they could use some of Archer's orientation videos, too.
[via Daily Beast]
